07.20.10
Hypnosisoft
“In an unusual move, Edstrom’s minions had New York’s Empire State Building lit in the Windows 95 colors. [...] Waggener Edstrom claimed that Microsoft received more media attention than even the O.J. Simpson trial, which was going on at the same time.”
–Barbarians Led by Bill Gates, a book composed
by the daughter of Microsoft’s PR mogul Pam Edstrom
Summary: Microsoft’s management is diverting behavioural criticism to Google; Microsoft’s former TE (AstroTurfer) Michael Gartenberg is still whitewashing the company’s image in Engadget
A reversal of truth is something Microsoft is very skilled at doing. One example is counterfeiting (Microsoft enjoys it) and another is the calling of GNU/Linux diversity “communism”. This type of hypocrisy can only ever withstand scrutiny given persistent hypnosis, or simply PR, to use terms that are more commonly used. Microsoft has lots of that.
Who can ever forget how Microsoft corrupted ISO, to use just one recent example of criminal ‘orgies’ at Microsoft (lasting many months and taking place all over the world)? Regarding the latest observations from IBM, The H writes:
At the beginning of July, the International Standardisation Organisation’s (ISO) Joint Technical Committee for standardisation issues in information technology (JTC001) published changes to its procedural guidelines. The new approach can be viewed as a reaction to the large volume of criticism after the expedited adoption of the Office Open XML (OOXML) document standard, which serves as the default format in Microsoft Office 2007. In particular, critics charge that complaints voiced during the expedited proceedings in 2008 were not sufficiently taken into account.
This is an issue which we last mentioned here. The post was titled “Lessons Not Learned From Microsoft’s OOXML Scam” although The H uses the headline “Lessons learned from a hasty standard”. It’s important not to give Microsoft a break just because time has passed. There is more to ISO (and its process) than this one aspect of it. And MPEG-LA is another infamous example of ISO’s incompetence, which is currently being put down by Google’s WebM.
“Microsoft COO Paints Google as Evil Empire,” says The VAR Guy, who observed an unusual public appearance last week. There are many more takeaways from that talk, one of which we wrote about earlier. Kevin Turner is a troublemaker we wrote a lot about in the context of GNU/Linux. Another one that used to work for Ballmer is Michael Gartenberg, who is constantly whitewashing Microsoft, ridiculing its competition, and relying on the fact that few people are aware of his relationship with Microsoft. We wrote about him in posts such as [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13]. At the very least he should publicly disclose that he used to work for Microsoft, about which he wrote last week: “Time for Microsoft to once again embrace and extend”
“Microsoft is not disrespected because it’s “successful” (or envied); Microsoft is disrespected, distrusted and also fined heavily because it’s corrupt.”Gartenberg gets across the false message that Microsoft is a great company with bad management. It’s shocking that Engadget still gives him a platform from which to spout out such nonsense as he still pretends to be unbiased while claiming success for Microsoft, no matter how big the failure. He was a big booster of products like Zune too and we covered all that before.
Microsoft is not disrespected because it’s “successful” (or envied); Microsoft is disrespected, distrusted and also fined heavily because it’s corrupt. So who would genuinely befriend or defend such an entity? █
